Puzzling specimen

Exchanging bodily fluids is a risky business for humans. For the blobby lifeforms of Biosis, though, it's a matter of life and death.

You play Mil, a curious creature with a pebble-like core and a snotty outer skin.

At the outset of the game, your beau finds herself robbed of her gelatinous coating, which means you have to embark on a quest to restore her to full gooiness.

Or, in other words, you solve a bunch of physics puzzles in a gloopy otherworldly setting.

Milling around?

I didn't enjoy my early moments with Biosis. Its mechanics are tricky to nail down, for one. Constant manipulation and precision timing are the watchwords here.

But once it all clicked, I began to enjoy the game quite a lot.

Mil is another of these useless protagonists who has to be governed completely by the player. Mil can't move or defend himself, so you have to poke him to each level exit through your own ingenuity.

You do so by manipulating the strange alien organisms that surround Mil. Some will attract Mil like a magnet. Some will shoot out a vine and swing him. Some will propel him across the level in some other way.

Each organism has a secondary function, which you can 'activate' by angering it with a swipe. Suddenly, the magnet organism repels, for example. Or the vine creature lengthens its swing.

Multiple organisms

IAPs explained

Just the one IAP here, and that's to unlock all the levels for 69p / 99c.

But you can just do that through normal play, if you're good / patient enough.

It's the interplay between these organisms and their multiple modes, all usually under the pressure of time as you bid to catch Mil in mid-air, that initially frustrates.

Once you stop having to think about whether you need to tap or swipe at any given moment, though, you're presented with a varied and imaginative puzzler. Given the dearth of originality to be found in the physics-puzzler genre these days, that's not to be sniffed at.

Still, frustration and repetitiveness continued to bubble just under the surface throughout my time with Biosis, and I'm not sure I'll be inclined to play it much even in the near future.

But its strange world and intricate overlapping systems undoubtedly transport you somewhere new, which is a tricky thing to do in any game.